140 characters. This is the exact number of characters it will take you to waste your entire life on TWITTER! If you’re not on twitter just yet, you’re missing out. It’s a fascinating online universe where you can discuss current events, discover breaking news, and interact with people around the world–instantly.

iPhone Twitter Clients Are The Best Out There

We’ve reviewed plenty of iPhone twitter apps in the past. Of course, with time each new app just gets better and better. Of course we haven’t reviewed every single twitter app just yet–that would be crazy. But we have reviewed: twinkle, tweetie, twitterfon, tweetstack, tweetdeck, and qTweeter (jailbreak required). Using twitter on the iPhone is an awesome experience. It’s simple, the apps are wonderful, and it’s easy on the eyes.

Which iPhone Twitter App Should I Be Using?

Deciding on a twitter iPhone app to use is like choosing ice cream flavours–it’s always fun to get some variety. On top of this, choosing a twitter iPhone app depends on what features matter most to YOU! For me, I’ve been switching between tweetie (for it’s speed), EchoFon (formerly twitterfon; easy interface), tweetdeck (cloud syncing with desktop groups), and IM+ (for push). How am I supposed to get a twitter app that has all of this in one package?

I don’t ask for a lot when it comes to iPhone twitter clients, but here are some features that I should have:
- indicators along the bottom of new friend/reply/dm tweets
- quick reply/retweet/DM by sliding finger to the right along a tweet
- responding to multiple people in one tweet easily
- tracking conversations between others easily
- easy picture/video uploading
- push notifications of @ replies and DM’s (direct messages)
- sending tweets longer than 140 characters
- easy deletion of tweets
- custom groups of people for easy following (tweetdeck is awesome for this)
- fast user account switching
- trends, search, go to user, easy follow/unfollow
- lots of user info when I click on their name

I would use a combination of the aforementioned twitter apps to get what I wanted above. Now going into my testing of SimplyTweet I had all of this in mind. How would SimplyTweet stack up above the rest?

Enter Stage Right: SimplyTweet–One of the Best Twitter Apps to Date

That’s right folks. I’ve been using SimplyTweet for the past hour, testing it on twitter and I am happy to say that it satisfies all of my twitter “needs” in my list above (except for custom groups synced over the cloud–tweetdeck still remains king) and more!

Here are some of my favorite features of SimplyTweet (version 2.3), or features that make it so user friendly:
- composing a new tweet includes a shortcut of the hashtag symbol “#”
- reply to multiple people just by tapping their names
- multiple picture/video upload in a single tweet using a service like Posterous
- tapping a tweet has the following shortcuts on the screen: conversation view, retweet, home, email/post link to tweet
- tapping a user’s image brings up their full profile with stats and quick follow/unfollow
- quickly switch to ANY twitter account by one tap of your screen name (which is always showing at the top)
- push notifications of @ replies and DM’s
- customize retweet styles: RT or (via @abc)
- pictures search of images by keywords!

Phew…okay so as you can see SimplyTweet is one feature-rich iPhone twitter client! It’s just as fast as tweetie, plus there are notifications of new/unread tweets along the bottom like EchoFon. I had the application crash once on me so far, but aside from that it’s been pretty stable. I do find the icon is too similar to the iPhone’s SMS icon, so finding the app quickly on your homescreen can be tricky if you’re slow.

There are also other extra features too, such as customizing the sound of your SimplyTweet push notifications. The app comes with some neat sounds of birds chirping, etc. You can also get a “sent” sound for outgoing tweets. There is a theme selector to choose from different styles too to change up styling.

Now, here’s a full list of SimplyTweet’s features as stated on their website:
* Push notification support for Direct Messages and Mentions, showing new messages in the application badge
* Configurable push notification sounds
* Themes
* Saved views (create groups of friends, etc)
* Photos search
* Saved notes for accounts
* Multiple accounts support, with quick switch support
* HootSuite integration: importing of Twitter accounts from HootSuite
* Support for updating user profiles from within SimplyTweet, including profile picture
* Bookmarklet Support
* Landscape drafting mode (both Tweets and DM)
* Landscape view for builtin web browser
* Tweetshrink support (both tweets and DM)
* URL shortening
* Send direct messages longer than 140 characters
* Unread tweet indicators for all themes
* Instapaper Support
* Posterous Support (multiple photos and video upload) with hashtags converted to Posterous tags
* TwitPic support (multiple photos)
* yfrog support (multiple photos and video upload)
* img.ly support (multiple photos)
* TwitrPix support (multiple photos)
* TwitVid support (video upload)
* Browse conversations – display the reply chain of a message all in 1 screen
* Browse conversations between you and another person – display the tweets between you all in 2 screen
* Bigger text option

As You Can Tell: I Love SimplyTweet!

SimplyTweet is an extremely feature-rich twitter application. It is going to replace my existing combo of Tweetie/EchoFon. You have got to love the evolution of twitter apps for the iPhone. Every new app just keeps getting better and better.

SimplyTweet is available in the iPhone App Store for a price of $4.99. It is on the higher end of iPhone twitter apps, but with the impressive list of features and push notifications, that upper price tag is more than worth it. I do believe the pricepoint is fair considering how SimplyTweet just made using twitter better than ever for me.

I can easily say SimplyTweet is the best iPhone twitter app out there at the moment. It’s flown under the radar and trust me, you’ll be hearing a lot more about SimplyTweet on the interwebz! I was so impressed with SimplyTweet, I wrote this review immediately after testing it out. For me to publish a review so quickly, shows how much value I think this app offers.

Win a FREE Copy of SimplyTweet from iPhoneinCanada.ca!

This review doesn’t stop here, folks! You know me and I love my giveaways at the end of reviews. The kind folks at SimplyTweet have graciously donated a promo code to give away to one lucky, and deserving iPhoneinCanada.ca reader.

How to enter this contest? Easy. Just send out the following tweet on twitter:

Follow @iphoneincanada and @x1zero to win a FREE copy of @simplytweet! http://ow.ly/q5vX

The contest will end on Sunday, September 20th at 11:59 PM. The winner will be announced on twitter and on the blog shortly afterwards. Remember to send out the tweet above to enter. If you’re OCD, leave a comment to tell us you entered. GOOD LUCK!

SimplyTweet picture gallery: